


brimming with wildness just contained

by JoCarthage



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: AU from 1x1, Hand Feeding, M/M, Mentions of Caulfield, Minor Max Evans/Liz Ortecho, So much talking, lots of talking, lots of talking I swear to god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:06:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29104518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarthage/pseuds/JoCarthage
Summary: Michael and Alex meet at an orange orchard instead of his Airstream in 1x1. Some things stay the same; some are different.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 41
Kudos: 117
Collections: Michael Guerin is a Grower, Roswell New Mexico Comment Bingo Prizes





	brimming with wildness just contained

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PinkSparkleUnicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkSparkleUnicorn/gifts).



> So a few weeks ago I watched 4 seasons of Black Sails in about 10 days, and afterwards, [somehowfurious](https://somehowfurious.tumblr.com/) recommended the much-lauded [Orangeverse in that fandom](https://archiveofourown.org/series/599761).  
> 
> 
> I found it totally delightful and so when the time came for me to write @[aliciam72](https://aliciam72.tumblr.com/)💖 / [PinkSparkleUnicorn's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkSparkleUnicorn/pseuds/PinkSparkleUnicorn) winning fic for the RNM Comment Bingo earlier this month, [I ended up writing this](https://rnmbingo.tumblr.com/post/64103859904800584/2021-rnm-comment-bingo-winners-announced). This wasn't as fluffy as you asked, but I think you'll enjoy it!
> 
> Also, the title is from a quote in [this NPR review of Amanda Coplin's _The Orchardist,_](https://www.npr.org/2012/08/23/159365690/a-lyrical-portrait-of-life-and-death-in-the-orchard) which I found after writing this and trying to come up with a title.
> 
> I would normally leave this to the end, but in case you don't know what a hogan is, it might be worth it clicking through these:  
> \- Watch a very cool video about hogans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E6as5KIX7U  
> \- And check-out the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogan
> 
> I should also say: this includes a lot of Michael thinking about how his life has changed and talking about things that do and don't matter to him. We have so many great, productive conversations about Michael's POV in the 18+ server and I wanted to say this is one of many possible visions of where he's at in this moment.

“Hey, this is private proper --” Michael’s hand clenched around the airman’s upper arm, spinning him away from the westernmost tree in his orange orchard.

“Guerin?”

Michael had not spent a night sleeping on a jail cell bench after defending Rosa posthumous’s honor _again_ only to see more ghosts of his mistakes past come back to haunt him before he was ready for them. 

He tried to keep his voice even. “Alex.” He said, and forced himself to look away from his smiling eyes, looking into the thick foliage of the tree behind him. “Back from Baghdad?”

Something flickered over Alex’s face as he leaned down, knocking on his leg. Michael had known -- everyone had known, what with Isobel’s parade and all -- but it hurt like biting down on a thistle to hear the evidence for himself. “Mostly.”

Michael’s control over his features was getting weaker by the second, but he glanced over Alex’s shoulder to see Jesse Manes directing airmen milling around over his carefully tended front garden and steeled himself. “What’re you doing here? It sure as hell doesn’t look legal.”

“I --” Alex started, before frowning, turning his back on his father to face Michael. “The records the Master Sergeant showed me said this was open pasture. The Air Force has been trying to purchase the land for a decade, the Master Sergeant got approval from the county to survey the land, in case the most recent bid was accepted by the landowner.”

“Well,” Michael said, hitching his thumb in the pocket of his overalls, “He can pack it up, because the landowner is absolutely not going to sell. Not to him, not at any price.”

Alex wavered a little closer to Michael, "Yeah," he said, voice a little breathy, “I could see that.” Then he paused, not seeming to want to move. He took a breath. Michael stayed still and watched him; this was his favorite moment, from the rare occasions he let anyone other than his family or his workers onto his property.

Oranges didn’t have the kick-you-in-the-face scent of some crops, like garlic, or the stunning blossom displays of stone fruits. But in a mass like this, when the wind blew from the east, they had the most amazing perfume. It got in your hair, into your clothes, under your nails. He watched as it settled around Alex, as he let himself see and smell and be present in his body for the first second of the day.

Alex shifted his weight, settling his cane in the rich, dark earth. “So, you’re a farmer now?”

“An orchardist, technically,” Michael said, and gave Alex a smirk. “But I prefer tree-keeper.”

Alex snorted and then Jesse Manes shouted something Michael didn’t catch, he was so focused on the way Alex’s chest pressed against the front of his uniform jacket, trying to count each breath the way he did on the few nights they’d gotten to sleep together and wake up in the same bed. Before that last night in Tucson. Alex turned, and Michael mourned the way his entire body stiffened up as he projected his voice to the men around his father:

“Our intel on this land was clearly incorrect and I will be relaying that to command. Now we should get out of here before the landowner calls the Sheriff on us.”

“I’ll do it, Jesse,” Michael called out, voice steady and carrying. Alex jerked back around to stare at him, eyes a bit wide. Michael finished his thought, staring Jesse Manes down over Alex’s shoulder. “Don’t you try to bet against me and mine again. It won't go any better than last time.”

Jesse Manes turned as if he hadn’t heard Michael, ordering the men back to their trucks.

“And leave anything you took for samples,” Michael called out, pulling up his phone and turning on the video, enunciating clearly: “I do not give the Air Force consent to search the property.”

The airmen all froze, hands on the paper bags they’d been filling with scoops of Michael’s carefully cultivated dirt and fistfuls from his front bed plantings. They turned to stare at Jesse Manes, but between the winking eye of the camera and their memory of Alex’s words about speaking to command, the men carefully set the bags down.

“Have a good day, now,” Michael projected, forcing a smile into his voice. “Captain Manes will be with you in a moment, once I’ve finished giving him a piece of my mind about fifth and third amendment violations.”

The men moved towards their trucks parked on the far side of Michael’s property line.

Michael could have been looking too hard, but he thought he saw just a bit of easiness slip into Alex’s shoulders at hearing Michael ignore his father’s rank and while remembering his own. That little give was enough to make Michael brave, so he reached up over Alex’s head with his right hand, feeling his dark eyes settle back on him, and tugged on an unripe orange, using a bit of his power to snap it cleanly from the stem without using his clippers. He pulled the orange free of the tangled leaves and brought it down, holding it between their chests.

“Come back here when this is ripe,” Michael said, voice for Alex’s ears only.

Alex bit his lip, voice matching Michael’s for softness, hands still unmoving at his sides. “How will I know it’s ready?”

Michael smiled, drifting his fingers down Alex’s arm closest to the orchard, where his comrades couldn't see, and slid the back of his hand under Alex’s fingertips. “Press down against my skin,”

And Alex did, the feeling of his fingers on Michael’s hand making his entire body hum with it; from the flare in Alex’s eyes, he was experiencing something similar. “When the skin of the orange gives just that much, it is ready to eat. Bring it back to me, and we’ll share it.”

Alex looked a little overwhelmed and Michael would have felt bad, but he’d promised himself 7 years ago, the last time Alex had walked away, if he got another chance, he’d be better. Not lose his shit, not fall into bed, not blame Alex for things he couldn’t control or absolve him of choices he’d made based on the information in front of him. He’d had 7 years to grow up. And so had Alex.

Alex reached up between them, balancing on his crutch, and wrapped his hand around where Michael held the orange between them, pressing his fingers to the scars on his hand, gentle and unwincing. Michael felt warmth tingle down his arm and straight to his fast-beating heart. Then Alex slid his fingertips to the first patch of unmarred skin on Michael's wrist. “Like this?”

Michael nodded, keeping his face still as Alex took the slight weight of the orange and pressed it between his clipboard and his chest before rebalancing on his crutch. 

“I’ll see you then,” he murmured, a whole world in his face, before he turned and walked towards the trucks.

Michael had tried to be cool, tried to be collected, tried to be his best self; but there was no amount of emotional control that could keep him from watching Alex Manes’s truck until long after it had disappeared over the horizon.

\--

“You know, the third amendment is about quartering soldiers in times of war,” said a warm voice at the base of the orange tree Michael was pruning to get rid of an infestation of rust mite.

“Well, I’d just gotten out of jail, I didn’t know if you all had camped out overnight,” he said levelly, finishing the last cut on the main branch. “Lookout down below,” he said, and carefully tossed the handful of clippings to the ground beside Alex and began to work his way down the ladder.

“And the part about ‘in times of war’?” Alex asked.

Michael stepped into the thick leaf mulch at the bottom of the tree, bracing his hand against the aluminum step. “Ms Radice would have to correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it includes both 'times of peace' and 'times of war.'” He took a breath, looking Alex up and down. Still in his uniform, eyes still warm and searching. Michael continued: “Though I haven’t known a lot of peace, since we’ve been sending our kids to fight other people’s kids in some corner of the world for our entire lives.”

Alex swallowed, setting that aside: “We didn’t stay overnight,” Alex said, taking a step forward. “And we left all the samples, so no fifth amendment violations either.” He looked to the side. “The Master S-- Jesse tried to sneak some into the lab, something he’d shoved in his pocket on the sly, but I’d already made sure the commander knew the score and they immolated it immediately without testing.”

Michael was glad; he didn’t know how much his growing powers might show up in Air Force tests, but he hadn’t wanted to find out.

Alex kept his voice low. “In the process, I learned some things. Some things about you, about me, that explained what happened that summer. The first summer I left.”

“The summer you _had_ to leave,” Michael corrected gently. “I know Jesse didn’t give you a choice.”

Alex frowned a little, shifting on his feet. “So, what does a tree keeper do to relax around here?"

Michael huffed a laugh: “If you think there’s a lot of relaxing going on running 5 acre citrus ranch in the middle of the desert, with only weekend help from the local foster care graduates club, you’re sorely mistaken.”

Alex reached slowly into his pants pocket, and pulled out an orange. _The_ orange. Michael caught his breath and Alex held it out.

Michael had heard from Isobel that Alex had _looked good_ at the reunion; Michael had spent the night going over his quarterly taxes. He’d heard from Maria that Alex _sounded good_. And Liz, who to Max’s delight and Michael’s confusion was back in town, had said Alex _was doing good_. But Michael had been holding on so tight to that feeling of Alex’s fingertips tracing over the back of his hand, he wasn’t sure what was going to happen now he had the full experience before him.

He forced himself to put his hands in his pockets and say: “Want to come inside? It’s not much, just something small. But it keeps the wet off and the heat out.”

“Sure,” Alex said, tucking the orange back into his pocket and following Michael over to the wide, flat avenue between the towering rows of orange trees. They walked in silence, only the sound of the desert wind through the dark green waxy leaves around them. Michael took a deep breath. The citrus smell in the orchard was blushing to the surface in the afternoon heat and filling the air around them. But he couldn't smell it. All he could imagine he smelled was Alex: Alex in his space, Alex on his land, Alex soon to be in his home.

He had stepped through the entrance to the clearing where he lived when he heard Alex stumble to a stop.

“Michael?”

Michael held his breath. He had a good reason, for the way his house looked. He had a good, reasonable reason.

But he wasn’t sure Alex would see it that way.

“Do you live in a men's hogan?”

Michael turned, watching Alex’s eyes rove over the circular wooden structure, covered in thick clay as a thermal sink. He watched him take note of the solar panels around it, the Airstream tucked behind it.

“It’s the most thoroughly beta-tested form of housing for this region,” Michael said. “And the Diné Housing Authority had some surplus from a demonstration build, so I bought the pieces at auction."

Alex was stepping closer, hand carefully going to the smoothly sanded exposed wood around the entrance. “Is this juniper?”  
  
“Yeah, it's what they had on hand; I know the specific type of wood doesn’t matter. And before you ask, I didn’t try to get anyone to bless it. That’s not my business and it’s not some kind of, like, cultural fetishization thing.” He took a breath. “I just think it would be nice if there was a bigger market for traditional Southwestern housing and if I could do my tiny part, it seemed like a good idea.” He stepped forward, standing on the other side of the entrance, the cool air flowing from inside the building tickling his fingertips.

“And like I said, traditional housing is the most beta-tested housing for any given region. And," he took a breath, "I wanted to live someplace that showed there's value in keeping some parts of yourself whole, even if it's different from what other people expect of you.” He jerked his head inside. “Want to take a look?”

Alex nodded, following Michael in. It had the exposed, smooth wooden walls and three central poles of a traditional hogan, but a wooden floor and Alex could see a door folded closely back against the wall. Michael knew there was a trap door under his low, Japanese-style full bed; the trap led down a ladder set into the bedrock and to the workshop where he kept the pieces he’d scrounged of his mother’s ship, along with the detailed diary Walt had given him on his 20th birthday.

There was a solidly built, flat-topped trunk at the end of the bed and Michael slipped it open, the sturdy hinges giving softly, showing Alex the deep reds and blacks and whites of the weavings inside: “In the winter, I cover the floors with rugs and use the low stove if it gets too cold.”

“And when you have company?” Alex asked carefully, and Michael smirked.

“I’ve been pretty busy with work, but if you’re asking if I’ve been celibate since you last saw me, that’s really none of your business.”

Alex nodded, face closing off a little. 

Michael took a breath: “I usually sit on the floor, but if you’d like to take the bed or the chest?” He didn’t mention there was a shower stool in the Air Stream or he’d regraded the entire walk from the parking area to here in case Alex needed a wheelchair to get around. He was trying to play this cool.

Alex murmured: “I can take the trunk.”

Michael moved away, giving him space to get settled. Michael sat back against the pillows at the top of his bed, crossed his boots on the blanket at the end nearest Alex. Then he reached under the low frame and snagged out two bottles: “Fresh orange juice? Squeezed today.”

Alex’s face flashed into a smile as he reached out: “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to this,” Alex said, popping off the top of the glass bottle and taking a long swig.

“I knew the food in the military was bad, but --”

Alex chuckled, swatting at his boots. “No, you, as a tree keeper. An orange grower. I know it was a speciality of your mother’s, but --”

And there was a chill in the air the mid-July heat could not account for.

“So,” Michael said, voice quiet. “You know what happened. At Caulfield.”

Alex nodded, jaw tight. “I’m trying to get him court-martialed --”

“Alex --”

“It’s _horrific_ , Michael, and I know you know but --”

Michael took a deep breath. “Why don’t we start at the beginning. How about you tell me what you know, and I’ll fill in the gaps.”

Alex worked his palm around the gently condensing glass. “I already told you I made sure Jesse couldn’t sneak any stolen stuff from your property into the lab.”

Michael nodded, unpopping the cap from his bottle and taking a deep draft of it.

“I was tracking him pretty closely after that, and I saw he tried to get it authorized through something called Project Shepherd.” Alex rolled his shoulders, trying to get the tension out of them. “I followed it down the rabbit hole. Lies and torture and family killings and illegal experimentation and --” He rolled his lips between his teeth.

“And then Caulfield in 2012.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “The notes were sketchy but it looked like a group of people came in to try and break the trapped survivors out. And something triggered an explosion.”

Michael was hearing a rushing in his ears, but he tried to speak normally: “Me,” Michael said, fighting to keep the self-recrimination out of his voice. He’d worked for 6 years to be at peace with what happened, what had been out of his control, and what choices he’d had based on the information in front of him. He cleared his throat: “It was me. I used my,” and he fiddled his fingers, “to try to break one of the prisoners -- Nora. Nora Truman was her name on this world. I tried to break her out.”

Alex's face cracked open as he started -- “Oh God, Michael, I’m so sorry --”

Michael closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “You know kids, when something goes really wrong in their lives, they’ll invent a memory that they’d dreamed about it beforehand. They’d _dreamed_ about the car wreck, the earthquake, the flood.” He looked at Alex steadily. “The assault.” Alex held his gaze. “They imagine they dreamed it, so they can blame themselves, because blaming yourself for things outside of your control is a way of asserting control.” He gave a half-smirk. “At least, that’s what the therapist we paid for with the settlement money told me.”

“I saw that too -- Sheriff Valenti shepherded a settlement process through with the Air Force, for the survivors and their unnamed descendents.” 

Michael nodded. “Enough for Max to be a novelist for as long as he likes, enough for Isobel to get a divorce once we realized her husband was a lying shitbag.”

“And enough for your to have your orchard.”

Michael smiled: “You know the joke about how to end-up with a million dollars in your first year of farming?”

Alex shook his head, raising his eyebrows.

Michael said flatly: “Start with five million.”

Alex huffed a laugh, looking around the hogan, eyes tracing the quietly spartan furnishings.

Michael kept going: “But, what I was saying about kids. Kids like we were. Kids like Sanders was, when he met my Mom. That’s the part of the story you don’t know -- the old guy who runs the junkyard, Walt Sanders?”

“With the eye-patch?”

“Yep,” Michael said with a half-a-smile. “He knew my Mom and Isobel’s when he was a kid, working on the Long Farm. Years ago, as soon as he could, he put together a notebook of everything he knew or remembered about Nora and Louise. Every scrap of information.” Michael gave a bittersweet smile. “He even took sketching classes at the community college, so he could draw their faces.” He affected a gruff tone: “‘Making people forget is one of the first steps of genocide; remembering things that make powerful people uncomfortable, that’s one way of fighting back. Sometimes it’s the only way.’”

“Smart man,” Alex said, leaning back a little bit against the wooden wall. 

“He is. He’s a good man too, under all the layers of crust and habitual curmudgeonliness. That diary is how I knew to look for Nora; I didn't believe she'd just died. Couldn't believe it. Threw myself into figuring it out, connected with Jim Valenti by accident, overheard him saying something to Max about his doodles, figured it out in a few months. Anyway, I was saying --”

“About kids.”

“Yeah. About us. When we were kids. When I was small, I used to blame myself for everything, _particularly_ things I had no control over. And the way you were just talking, it sounded like you were going to apologize to me. About Caulfield. And, it’s important to me, to my own sense of self, that you _don’t_. It took me 6 years to lay the blame for my mother’s death, the attempted genocide of my people on this planet, squarely at the door of the men responsible. Correctly assigning blame, setting that clear, impermeable boundary, is something I need from you, if we're going to keep talking.”

Alex looked him over, speaking slowly. “It’s a lot newer for me, so I think it’s a little compressed. All that trauma, all at once; it's a lot. I don’t think I have the distance to know exactly who to blame yet.” He tucked an arm around his waist. “But I can try.”

Michael felt a flutter under his heart: “That’s all I can ask. And, because I was needling you about the military earlier, I wanted to say: I don’t blame you for going in 2008. We both could have handled that summer better, but we were two traumatized queer kids in a rural, conservative area, doing our damndest not to hurt each other, and it’s a mercy we didn’t do worse than we did.” He took a slow breath, putting the cap back on his bottle and setting it to the floor. “But I think you had a lot more choices and a lot more perspective when you decided to apply for Officer Candidate School and started working your way towards that in your second year. When you came home and told me you were planning to make a career out of it.”

“You told me I was going to die and it was going to kill you,” Alex the words raw in his mouth. “You screamed it at me in the middle of the Red Roof Inn parking lot in Tuscon.”

“I’m sorry.” Michael said.

He let it sit there, hanging in the air. He could make excuses about how scared he’d been, how afraid for Alex as a queer Native kid heading to Iraq in a forward-deployed intelligence specialty -- as far forward as anyone in the Air Force ever got. At a deeper level, how afraid he’d been for himself, for this dream he’d been quilting together in the back of his head, him and Alex, alone together and against the world, just watching that future fall apart while Alex gave him some bullshit about advancement and duty and legacy.

But Michael had learned that sometimes apologies mean something if you let the person who you hurt tell you what they need. And just like you can’t edit a blank page, for one person to be heard, another person has to listen.

Alex swallowed. “Thank you. I, I didn’t know if I wanted to hear that, but I feel,” he rubbed his hands up his shoulders. “I feel a lot better having heard it. That was such a shitty day,” he said with a humorless laugh.  
  
“It was.” Michael said. “I’ve never gone back to Tucson. I get near the city limits and just pick a different highway. I can’t get near it.”

“I don’t stay at Red Roof Inns,” Alex said quietly. “I slept on a deeply shady pull-out couch of a Days Inn in Milwaukee rather than the much nicer Red Roof next door. I figured even the bed bugs wouldn't fuck with that shitty pullout.”

Michael let that settle for a long moment, letting the air and the smells of his home -- firewood and books and clay and weaving and oranges -- move between and around them. Let himself look, _really_ look, at Alex. At the planes of his face, the curve of his jaw, the way he was slipping the orange from his pocket, rolling it softly between his two open palms.

Then Michael gave him a half smile. “So. We've covered aliens, war, genocide; farming, therapy, trauma; and low-budget motel preferences.”

Alex met his eyes, matching his smile.

Michael continued, voice catching: “So, that makes me wonder -- is that orange ripe?”

Alex reached his hand out, the orange cradled in his palm. Michael uncrossed his legs and rolled himself forward, getting close to Alex’s space, kneeling as he put his hand under Alex’s, letting him place it in his palm.

Then Michael closed his hands around it, squeezing gently. “It feels perfect. Want to split it?”

Alex nodded, eyes on his fingers as Michael pressed his thumb through the skin, the smell of orange zest filling the air.

“Can I ask something else?” Alex asked as Michael began to work his thumb under the pith.

“Sure,” Michael said, beginning to peel the rind off into 6 equally sized lobes.

“The files said some of the aliens, the survivors’ descendents, could heal and could mindwalk. Can I ask -- why is your hand still hurt?”

Michael began to peel the lobes down, like the rind was a flower blooming around the untouched flesh of the orange. Michael kept his eyes on his fingers as he spoke: “For the first couple of years, it was for some pretty fucked up reasons. Reminding myself the world is hopeless. Trying not to change anything about myself so you’d have something stable to come home to, even if it was only the exact degree and type of my mess.” He took a breath, not sure if he wanted to see pity or understanding or something else on Alex’s face and so not looking.

He popped the rind off the bottom using his powers to float it into the lidded trash can in the corner, holding the bare heart of the orange in his left palm. “And at this point -- I guess I’m waiting to be ready. I don’t have a good reason not to ask Max to heal it. I don’t really like feeling in-pain. I could tell people I got cosmetic surgery with all my tree keeping riches,” he said, gesturing with his right hand and caught a glimpse of Alex’s smile. “But in a very real way, I’m waiting for myself. I’m waiting for myself to decide what I want to do, and I have enough time, I don’t have to force it.” He shrugged. “Maybe one day I’ll wake up in the morning and decide I don’t want the reminder anymore, and I’ll ask Max to heal it. Maybe I’ll keep it the rest of my life.”

He took a breath. “A lot of what I’ve spent a lot of the past 7 years doing is deciding what parts of myself I want to keep and what parts I want to change, and seeing that some damage can only be lived around, and some can be healed. And that's one of the reasons I like this house. It's a reminder that some traditions, some old things, can be good, if they have been tested for a long time and still serve the people using them. And I like myself a lot more now at 28 than I did at 18.” He looked down at his hand as it rested on his knee. “But it hasn't been a peaceful process. Like I said, I haven’t known a lot of peace in general. Trying to create space for it, protect that space,” he worked his jaw, “maybe make enough space for someone else in it. So it’s ready.”

And into his field of view, Alex’s hand wavered. Slow, slow as breathing, slow enough Michael could move away -- bat his hand away like a scared feral he still worried he was under all those layers of self-containment and self-awareness and hard-won confidence -- Alex reached into his palm and used his thumbs to split the orange heart in half, slipping a segment free. He held it, dry skin held between his finger and thumb, so delicately it could have been floating. 

And then he lifted it to Michael’s mouth. 

Michael met his eyes, a host of questions queuing up behind his tongue. Alex’s voice was soft: “It’s ready, Michael.”

Michael opened his lips and let Alex slide the orange slice in. He chewed it, the bursts of citrus sparking across his tongue as Alex took a slice for himself, closing his eyes and humming in pleasure at the fresh taste. Michael broke himself out of his trance at that sound long enough to pull off another segment and lift it to Alex’s mouth, his stomach flipping as Alex’s tongue chased the juice down his thumb.

Back and forth they went, touching and tasting, feeding and being fed. When Michael slipped the last slice into Alex’s mouth, he whispered into the space between them: “I told myself I wouldn’t fall into bed with you, that I wanted to talk. And we did. Talk. But I think there’s probably more talking we need to do before --”

Alex sucked his thumb into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the pad to get the last of the juice. Then he reached down and, cradling Michael’s hand to his lips, traced the lines of juice across his palm, eyes heavy on his. He worked between his fingers, over his knuckles, and ended with a kiss on the back of his hand, right where Michael had told him to press his fingertips those weeks ago at the edge of the orchard. Both of them were breathing hard, grinning wildly, their gasps filling the soft air of the hogan.

Alex murmured, voice cracking: “I agree, no sex. But I’d love to take you out for dinner. Go dancing. God, Michael, I’ve missed seeing you smile.”

Alex wrapped his hand around Michael’s, fingers finding the non-sticky places between his fingers. Michael chuckled: “You didn’t get to see me dancing that often. I didn’t even make it into prom before you were fighting.”

Alex shook his head: “You’re going to have to tell me about how you and Kyle reconciled; I saw his name in a lot of the reports.” Michael took a breath and Alex shook his head: “But not right now. Right now, if you want to, I want you to lay back on the bed, and I’m going to take off my leg, and I want to lay down next to you. I want to talk about every good thing I missed, and tell you every good thing you missed. I want to touch you and remember you’re safe and here and home; I want you to touch me and do the same. And when we get hungry, I want to take you to Crashdown or Prasong’s and get food in public with you like a friend.”

“Just a friend?”

Alex leaned forward, pressing his forehead against Michael’s, just breathing in the soft, close smells of him, voice harsh: “Not just friends. But you’re right, we should go slow. And I want to be your friend. I want to know who you are.”

Michael swayed closer to him, lips bare breaths apart. “I want to know about you too, Alex." He took a deep breath, voice catching: "But first, I want to kiss you.”

“God, yes, Michael --”

Michael’s hand sank into Alex’s thick hair, holding on for dear life as he kissed him with all he was worth, every good and bad and ugly and beautiful thing between them in their pasts, every hope for their futures. He kissed him like he needed him to breathe and like he knew Alex could breathe, if only he kept kissing him.

They kept their hands collapsed tight, as they dove into each other, both keeping the kiss from ramping up too high, reveling in the close, shared space they’d created between them.

And when they pulled back to breathe, neither knowing whose idea it was, the sound of their shared laughter filled the hogan.

Alex and Michael spent the afternoon in Michael's bed behind thick clay walls held up by 3 unblessed pillars of juniper from the mountains, surrounded by the smells of oranges. Their hands were soft and sure, voices rising and falling, cracking and chuckling, wavering and solid. They told each other stories of lost boys and found family, of quiet desert nights and terrifying explosions. And they began, in the smallest of ways, and with the smallest of threads, to build something bridging between them  _ that would last. _

**Author's Note:**

> Also, comments are love! Thank you so much for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * A [Restricted Work] by [Podcath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Podcath/pseuds/Podcath) Log in to view. 




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